Honda Australia has announced its intention to attract younger buyers to the brand, and the carmaker believes a more attractive warranty plan is the first step.

From this month, new Honda cars in Australia will now be covered by a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty - up from the previous three-years/100,000km.

Honda Australia director, Stephen Collins, said he believed the brand has earned a reputation for reliability and quality, but he admits younger potential customers who have never owned a Honda may need the extra security provided by the longer warranty.

The launch of the Civic, Civic Type R and CR-V represents a crucial time for the brand and its aspiration to hit 48,000 sales in 2017.

"Honda has an envied reputation for quality and reliability, the depth of engineering inherent in our vehicles is something our customers can trust, so we're taking things a big step further with this five-year warranty announcement," Collins said.

"In the competitive Australia market, customers expect brands to be innovative and Honda Australia is aiming to do this right across the business. Through our network of 107 dealers, we're continually focused on improving how we interact with our customers."

Underlining the importance of the warranty in the Australian market, the extra two years coverage is be paid by Honda Australia, instead of the Japanese head office. However, Collins said the local operation had the full support of the company.

Collins played down any suggestion that the warranty extension was driven by a need to be more competitive against its rivals that out-sell it, including Toyota and Mazda which still offer three-year warranties.

"I don't think there was an issue," Collins said. "I think we have a good reputation for reliability but we want to get on the front foot. We want to be proactive."

Mitsubishi was the first Japanese brand to offer a five-year warranty, but it is restricted to 100,000km. Isuzu also offers a five-year/130,000km warranty on its D-Max and MU-X.

Hyundai, Skoda, Renault and Jeep all offer five-year warranties. Peugeot and Citroen both offer six-year/unlimited kilometre warranties while Kia is still the market leader with its seven-year/unlimited kilometre coverage.